As a promotional measure, it has become increasingly common to offer gifts as an incentive to purchasers of products of various kinds, including those supplied in bottles, for example, beverages and other liquid products. Where the main purchase is supplied in a bottle, difficulty arises in finding a suitable means of mounting the container or package containing the gift on the bottle. If the gift is secured to the body of the bottle, the overall circumference of the item is increased, making it more difficult to fit an appropriate number of bottles on a shelf for display to purchasers. Whatever part of the bottle the gift is secured to, there is difficulty in securing it so that it simply cannot be removed and taken away without having been paid for.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,102,233 describes a container having a wall which defines a generally closed space; there being formed in the wall an opening for receiving the neck of a bottle. The container has a resilient retaining structure having a generally central aperture which is aligned with the opening in the container wall and is of dimensions selected to be slightly smaller than those of the annular abutment surface on the neck of the bottle to which it is to be fitted. The structure is such that, when the neck of a bottle is inserted into the container through the opening in the wall thereof, an end portion of the neck of the bottle can be forced through the aperture of the retaining structure due to its resilient nature so that a lip of the structure around the aperture engages with the abutment surface. This engagement opposes movement of the neck of the bottle back out of the container. The neck of the bottle serves to close the container so as to prevent removal of its contents of the container.
Since the neck of the bottle closes the container, the gift, or other content cannot easily be removed. Furthermore, the retaining means prevents removal of the container from the neck of the bottle so the container of U.S. Pat. No. 6,102,233 provides one means for securely fastening a gift to a bottle. However, with the container described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,102,233, to remove the gift from the container or the container from the bottle, the container must essentially be destroyed. Although this has the advantage of making theft of the gift difficult, it has the disadvantage that, in destroying the packaging container to reach the gift, so much force is needed that the gift may be damaged in removing it from the container.